Developer Interviews
Several developer interviews will be coming this week, and Gamebreaker has released their interview with Ghostcrawler. A summary of the main points is below, but watching the full interview is worth it if you want to hear the full answers!

World

Mists of Pandaria daily quests have shown that competing with other players for mob tagging and such is not fun. You should be excited when there are other players around, not grumpy! Blizzard is still actively looking for a solution to make it a nice thing to have other people around.

It isn't likely that the concept of servers will ever disappear, but solutions for low population realms are still being looked for.

There is a lot of variation in realm population as new patches come out, so merging and unmerging realms as the population goes up and down wouldn't make a lot of sense.

Questing / Reputation

Blizzard may have overdone the daily quests a little bit in pursuit of the goal of always having something for players to do when they log in. If they had to do it again, something like the Golden Lotus unlocking more and more areas would have been changed to just unlock a new area that replaces the old one, keeping the number of quests that you have to do every day the same.

Golden Lotus and Klaxxi have enough daily quests to burn players out, while August Celestial and Shado-Pan have a more reasonable amount of quests.

Lowering the rep requirements on some of the rewards was an attempt to make the amount of rep required before you could spend Valor Points more reasonable. If they had to do it again, it might have been nice to lower the requirements on some of the gear more so that there were some things to spend Valor Points on without grinding so many reputations.

Historically, players would use alts as something to do after they were mostly finished with what they wanted to do on their main character. Mists of Pandaria's goal was to provide enough to do so that you never ran out of things to do, which is nice with one character, but less nice with many. Solutions to this problem are being looked at, but they want to avoid the extreme of giving every character everything or making everything account wide.

One alternative being considered for reputation leveling is bonus reputation from your first scenario of the day.

PvE

The difference in difficulty between 10 and 25 man this time around was much smaller than before.

When looking at raid DPS parses, you have to be aware of sampling bias. If all of the good players are playing one spec, then the DPS of the other two specs will be lower, as those players are messing around or don't know what they are doing.

It isn't okay for a class to be really really bad on certain fights, but it is okay if some classes are somewhat better on some fights. It is more important to have fun encounters than it is to have an encounter where each spec is the best.

Ideally we will never see a 5 or 6 boss raid tier again.

The new loot system has worked out well, as players don't have any reason to be mad at each other over loot in LFR anymore. It is possible that we could see it being used in dungeons as well, but that is still under discussion.

One thing being considered is offering another choice to players that get the same item from a boss repeatedly. This would be some consolation prize like loot, not another item from the boss.

The use of PvP gear in PvE is okay, as grinding points to get an item rather than relying on a random drop is an idea that some players like. The item levels are lower than what the player would get in PvE, so the gear isn't overpowered. Players shouldn't have to go and do PvP to get gear to use in PvE or vice versa.

Patch 5.2 is going to take a look at what talents are very popular or very unpopular and try and bring them back in line. Overall though, the new talent system is working out well. Ideally there should be at least two talent choices per tier that are good, if not three.

PvP

PvP will never be perfectly balanced, but it can be balanced enough to be fun and fair. The balance in Mists of Pandaria still has some tweaking to do before it is at that point.

Hybrids could see some PvP power going towards their off role damage or healing. It is okay for a DPS to throw out a few heals, but not okay if they are as good as a healer for their team.

It is possible that base resilience could be increased to compensate for the PvP Power increase on Conquest weapons, but they need more than a few days of observation before a decision can be made.

We may see some changes in the future to make things better for people who PvP on multiple characters, as far as earning Conquest Points goes.

Many of the changes in Patch 5.1 were to address issues of PvP balance, and most didn't have a big impact on PvE.

Patch 5.1 - Old Raid Encounter Changes

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

We believe there was a lot of confusion when we originally announced this change and we're certainly at fault for said confusion. The original patch note was very vague to the point of being misleading. It was never our intent to weaken old raid boss encounters to allow anyone to have a chance to solo them, regardless of class, spec, or skill.

What we did change were encounters that were mechanically impossible for one person to accomplish, solely for the purpose of ensuring players have easier access to the hunt for the new rare companion pets -- the drop rates of which are actually set to account for a group of three players, not one.

Moving forward, though, we do not plan to adjust encounters for tougher raid bosses to be solo’able by all classes and specs.

Battleground Queues and Addons

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

if you break it down, what does a full oQueue premade bring to the table that is unfair?
I’ll try to break it down as clearly as I can:

Any addon that enables a full, organized Battleground group to queue against a randomly assembled group is creating a scenario where that coordinated group has a huge advantage. That is not in the spirit of the experience we want to provide in the normal Battleground queue. Playing with friends is fun and important, but it shouldn't come at the expense of the spirit of the game nor the fun of others.

The normal Battleground queue is for players to jump in and play against other players in a similar situation. We realize that it's not a perfect system, and we're still looking at ways to improve normal Battleground queues further. Regardless, it's not meant for organized groups to "pug stomp" and get quick Honor. We have built in outlets for players that want to organize--if a competitive, social experience was really the goal, then there are clear ways to achieve that.

The ultimate effect that this kind of queuing has had is to drive players away from PvP. Perhaps it's been a long time since you've been in a random group, but a lot of players will see that they're up against a premade and simply quit. At best, they suffer through it. To an extent premade groups count on this. Heck, one of the popular addons announces opposing players that appear to have rage quit.

Addons aren’t really a viable solution for botting issues, but we do take those issues seriously and we'll continue our work on improvements to the Battleground system, including better ways to deal with botting and other exploitative gameplay.

Now let us be honest, due to these addons and people like Rathamus and Tiny, regular Battleground PVP had picked up and was growing by leaps and bounds. That is what alerted you. More and more people were turning to the "coordinated" PVP and fewer and fewer "random groups" were being formed. The BG's were no longer sitting idle.
False. That is neither what 'alerted' us, nor were Battlegrounds ever even close to sitting idle.

What is true that there's been an increase in pre-made groups disrupting the PvP experience for other players, though. Pre-mades in the normal queue, however they are formed, are not something that we've ever been particularly fond of. It had become more of an issue of late, so we addressed it accordingly.

I know for a fact, that more and more of our games were against other "coordinated" opposing players. Battles became longer, harder and a whole hell of a lot more fun! They were not the Farm fest you claim they were, they were true Player vs Player games. Not scripted, not forced on anyone, not the repetitive grind of the normal wow game.
Perhaps this seemed to be your personal experience, but I assure you that this was far from generally the case. Regardless, what of the games that you played that weren't against other pre-mades? Just hapless casualties to your fun, I suppose?

Based on your enthusiasm for "true Player vs Player" combat, I'm sure that you'll find War Games and Rated Battlegrounds quite compelling.

You gave us everything we needed, including the idea, but then turned around and slapped our hands, pointed a finger, called us a name and said, this is NOT for you, it is for the REAL players.
You've made the assumption that all those things were accomplished expressly so that you could queue into battlegrounds as an organized group against disorganized opponents? That assumption is mistaken. If you want organized PvP against organized opponents, as you claim, that experience is readily available.

No one's wrist was slapped. There have been no suspensions over this issue. We're just making our stance on the subject clear, so that there's no room for misunderstanding.

Fix the bot problem and you'll see the premade "problem" fix itself.
Bots are a separate problem, with a separate solution. Please stop conflating the two, because, and I'll say this as respectfully as I can: this is complete nonsense.

Put simply, this argument is a red herring. For as long as there's been Battleground PvP, there have been players looking for a way to destroy their enemies to quickly and easily get fast rewards with a minimal time investment. That's the bottom line here, or the variety of other options available would be more compelling.

Bots aren't an issue in War Games or Rated Battlegrounds.

We love a premade PvP, and we love challenges. You guys could've come out with a premade PvP random battleground where we can match against other 10m/15m/40m premades PvP and go all out. Provide less honor point/conquest point. It's like an RBG, but without the ratings involved. Doesn't this solves all the problem everyone's having?
We're open to exploring the possibility of creating a pre-made queue for Battlegrounds, or improving the War Game system in some way.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Battle.net Balance and Blizzard Store
Using Battle.net Balance for more goods and services is certainly something we're working toward. We're kind of in an in-between stage where we have some services working together but not others, and unfortunately it's just not a simple thing to get as many systems and platforms (some dating back to the original release of WoW) as we have updated and integrated into a more cohesive experience. We'll get there though, and in the meantime I do apologize you weren't able to get the Cinder Kitten yet using Battle.net Balance. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Purpose of X.1 PatchesYou forgot to mention those patches took months(I think ulduar was 5 month after Wrath launch) where as 5.1 was release in 2 months time. This was never meant to be a raid teir especially considering most people have not even downed most of the normal/heroic bosses.
Yeah, the main difference is really timing. In our quest to provide content faster we've been shaking up the patch cycles and how we approach our content roll out through the life of an expansion. Not wanting to speak too soon, but it looks like the cadence of this expansion is a lot closer to what we've been promising for years. It makes sense to me that if most people are not progressed through the initial content that the first x.1 patch (if it's going to arrive as quickly as 5.1 did) doesn't include an additional tier. And if that then means there are regular content releases thereafter... I don't know, at least for as much time I have to play and as progressed as I am, it sounds pretty good to me. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Patch 5.2 Farm ChangesHow about a fishing pond, where we can chum the waters and get a school of fish we want/need? Dunno if that current pool is deep enough. Pfft.
That was actually mentined in our last meeting with the development team. While I can't make you any promises, I can tell you they geeked out a bit thinking about that one. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

WoW Graphics Engine
If the game had received absolutely zero graphical updates since release, I could definitely get behind the idea of a complete revamp. But that's really not the case. There's been a steady stream of updates over the course of WoW's existence. A huge number of models and textures have been improved. Yes, character models are still on the to-do list, but we've acknowledged that many times and have said we're working on them. I'm as eager to be sharing news on that with you as you are to hear it, trust me. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Upcoming Transmog Restriction Changes
Yup, definitely planning to lift this restriction down the line. As Zarhym said, we're currently hoping it'll make 5.2, but that's not 100% yet. We're working to allow you to transmogrify items that share animations, such as polearms and staves. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Curse Launches Marriland.com: Pokémon Reference
If you are or were interested in Pokémon, then you likely have visited Marriland in the past. Today a new update was released that brought it in to the Curse family of sites and added or improved a lot of the content. If you haven't visited before, there are lots of guides and walkthroughs, videos, updated forums, the wiki, and the Pokedex!

I am so happy the LFR loot system has changed into what it is today. Just reading some of the comments about selfish people stacking friends to help them roll/ steal loot quite frankly pisses me off. Thank you for the change, Blizzard. No more needless loot drama!

And I believe that dailies rewarding charms and VP is good enough, there shouldn't be any gear tied to rep. Just mounts, pets, and vanity rewards.

Originally Posted by voidspark

I'm pretty sure that is what people hated the most about Molten Front, not even the length, but the perception that you complete dailies just to get more dailies. A much more compelling reward would be better and more varieties of dailies as GC only now just figured out.

Well the sad thing is that there was a lot of complaints about the Molten Front in regards to the way of starting out with only a few dailies and then being gated off from doing more. Then they go in and then place a gate on two fractions behind one that has a lot of gating going on.

Originally Posted by voidspark

And I believe that dailies rewarding charms and VP is good enough, there shouldn't be any gear tied to rep. Just mounts, pets, and vanity rewards.

Isnt odd that the ones that players seem to be enjoying in general are the ones that only offer cosmetic rewards and the painful ones are the ones that gear is gated behind. Seems more like a psychological test on the community.

Please dont upgrade the base resilience, if you have to do something put more resil on the gear.
Even more base resil would completely wreck the 70s bracket, healers and fc's in this bracket(myself included) are already at 80%+ resil and we have no wish for becoming immune again.
However fun it is to troll 90s reaching 90-100% resi would completely destroy what little is left of the 70s bracket.

As i told before (but i think my comment was deleted), the entry of GC to the Dev team of WoW lead to the casualization and "i cannot get bored more" way of the game. Some of the features they implemented were good enough, but the game went to ..... I hope they fire that guy and return the old Devs back!

Mists of Pandaria daily quests have shown that competing with other players for mob tagging and such is not fun. You should be excited when there are other players around, not grumpy! Blizzard is still actively looking for a solution to make it a nice thing to have other people around.

Easy solution remove tag for kills/quest loots but keep it for normal loot.
You hit first a "kill 10 of these mobs" you are the only one eligible for the normal loot but everyone who hits it too gets the quest drop or the quest kill.

But that just makes it way too easy. As a feral druid, I could just run through the GL mogul area and faerie fire every mob that someone else is fighting.. I would be done my quest in 30 seconds with no effort at all. After awhile, everyone would be doing that.. using their lowest threat attack to tag their 10 mobs as quick as possible. heck, tag 20 in case someone does kill the first 10 fast enough.

The real solution is to have rotating quest areas like AC, but have them random per player, not per server... for factions like AC, that would divide the population by 4 right away. Form a group before pickign up the quest, and everyone in the quest gets the same quest.

---------- Post added 2012-12-06 at 04:36 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Siph

Tuning old raid encounters for soloing, yet you still need to be IN A RAID to enter the damn instances?

Yeah, go read the patch notes. No you don´t.

---------- Post added 2012-12-06 at 04:59 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Kornstyle

As i told before (but i think my comment was deleted), the entry of GC to the Dev team of WoW lead to the casualization and "i cannot get bored more" way of the game. Some of the features they implemented were good enough, but the game went to ..... I hope they fire that guy and return the old Devs back!

Really? Do you remember grinding mobs endlessly in Sithilis for pages? Do you remember doing the same 4 quests every day for 2 months in BC for Ogrilla? The game is certainly not perfect, but anyone who thinks the game ´got worse´isn´t being honest.

I am not kidding.. for probably 12 months, éndgame´ for non-raiders was killing human mobs in Sith for cen rep. You could also run 1 of about 3 dungeons for dungeon sets. That was it.

The tabard system was a stupid way to do rep. Why even have the rep at all, just take the epics and put them as random drops on the heroic bosses in dungeons. Same thing. The reputations now are well done, the progress the story, they give you lore for going into dungeon and raids.

Seriously, you might as well remove the graphics for mobs and dungeons.. just make it a white room you go into and roll for ´gear´ with plus 10 ilvls.

It is but don't expect anybody here to understand that. In reality they are extremely selfish and wouldn't spread the loot around anyway. Like the guy above who couldn't be bothered to respond to players asking him to be a nice guy. Yet somehow they have the gal to call out the old system as being selfish because people loot traded with one and other. Whatever. This expac has just been frustration on top of frustration. Piling more frustration in LFR and REMOVING THE HUMAN ELEMENT out of the equation will just bleed subs.

So now you want people to play loot Santa. The system is fine the way it is. As for people asking me to be to be a nice guy, if more than 5% actually asked nicely, then maybe that would work. You have no idea who I am, how I play the game and how I treat other people. It was people whining and complaining that they didn't get what they wanted that got the system changed. In my opinion the new system has drastically improved the experience in LFR., however people still aren't getting the shinies fast enough, so surprise, let's complain about it again. If I could trade loot I didn't need, I actually would, but at my discretion, not because people say "GIMME", which is what would happen. The problem right now is the expectation that you should be able to run LFR 3 times and have all the loot you need. It's not designed that way, nor should it be. You still have two months minimum til the next patch, so why the hell do you need to have all your drops already? That's not the way raid gearing is meant to work.

Isnt odd that the ones that players seem to be enjoying in general are the ones that only offer cosmetic rewards and the painful ones are the ones that gear is gated behind. Seems more like a psychological test on the community.

Not really. The ones where you need gear, for the entry tier, are ones you have to do to be competitive.

The ones where you get cosmetic rewards are, as Blizzard tries to bleat on and on (like the goats, pun?) for all dailies, actually optional meaning you can just do them at your own pace.

The numbers are very consistent - they also show what classes are played on week basis - not all the population like others. And if you didn't know... 3 million is a number that is playing per week.... And this does not include Asia.

No, that's not accurate. Warcraftrealm numbers aren't consistent with what the devs tell us (more rets than rogues, paladin the most popular class, rogue the least popular, druid extremely popular (read second most popular) ). That site is simply totally wrong.

It should also go by common sense- go to any realm and /who. I don't know what's wrong with their addon, but if it's showing 4% druids and 5% paladins and 10% rogues, it is trivially incorrect. Look at who is in your BGs, your arenas, your LFRs, everything. You have picked one thing that you think argues something you believe, and it's bad data.

Your link is wrong cause its based on whole population of classes that are not even active.

The 90s didn't all just give up bro. That argument makes no sense.

Brawlers guild is pushing more and more dps classes into the picture in the last week. BLizzard needs to react now before it goes out of hand and queues will become over 1 hour long.

I have no idea what you are talking about.

warcraftrealms is garbage data. I linked you a real one, and GC has told you outright that paladins are the most popular class, and that at times like now, there are more rets than rogues.